Sunday, April 01, 2012

CNTTS Receives Major TC-related Collection

The H. Milton Haggard Center for New Testament Textual Criticism (CNTTS) is pleased to announce the donation by Dr. Glen L. Thompson of part of his collection, with the donation including 78 volumes in the fields of papyrology and textual criticism. Professor Thompson has served as professor of history at Wisconsin Lutheran College since 2002, and is currently teaching at Asia Lutheran College in Hong Kong.

The Thompson Collection includes an impressive number of works on papyrological topics such as Coptic and Demotic linguistics and papyrology. In the process of assessing the value of the library, CNTTS’ Scholar-in-Residence James M. Leonard discovered that about half of the collection consists of books no longer available at major book vendors or even in the extensive holdings of major specialist libraries such as Tyndale House, Cambridge. Dr. Bill Warren, the CNTTS Director and Landrum P. Leavell II Professor of New Testament and Greek, noted, “This thoughtful donation by Glen Thompson is a prime example of the type of attitude and action that will keep our field moving forward by enhancing the research options both for those here and for visiting scholars and students.” This is the second substantial library donation to CNTTS in the past year, the first being the Gordon D. Fee Collection.

The Thompson Collection will be a part of the Seminary’s John T. Christian Library which contains about 250,000 bound volumes, the largest theological library in the Gulf Coast region of North America with about 250,000 bound volumes. The collection will be housed at the CNTTS and available for use onsite by researchers and visiting scholars. CNTTS is located at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the five largest accredited seminaries in North America. Currently, 10 full-time and part-time researchers are employed at CNTTS, with 4 PhD students working on dissertations in New Testament textual studies.